UK university forced to remove claims of being in the 'top 1%' in the world

Some
universities in the UK have been challenged on claims they are
making about their positions in rankings.Rochelle
Nicole / Unsplash

University rankings are meant to be a quick way of working out
the best place you could go to study a subject. There are several
different rankings, but the same few schools often end up at the
top.

The top three in the latest World University
Rankings are MIT, Stanford, and Harvard in the US. Cambridge
University topped the UK rankings and was fifth overall.

But according to the
BBC, at least one university in the UK has been challenged on
claims it made about its position in the charts.

The University of Reading had to take down a claim that it was in
the top 1% of the world's universities after a complaint to the
Advertising Standards Authority said this figure could not be
substantiated and could be misleading. Because the university
agreed to remove the claim, there will be no further formal
investigation into the matter.

Universities can get away with cherry-picking statistics like
these because many different rankings are available, such as ones
that focus on specific subjects. Rankings often consider things
like graduation and employment rates, admission requirements,
scholarship opportunities, and student satisfaction, and
publications and research.

If a university is particularly high in a ranking for one
subject, it technically could say it is high up in the charts
without being too specific about where the figure comes from.

Charles Heymann, the University of Reading's head of corporate
communications, told the BBC that the ASA now needed to
investigate every other UK university that claims it is in the
top 1%.

"Like dozens of other UK universities in recent years, we judged
this put us in the top 1% out of an estimated 20,000 institutions
internationally," he said. "We accept, though, the ASA's view
that this could not be proved given no league table assesses
every single university worldwide."

According to Nick Hillman, director of the Higher Education
Policy Institute, universities' marketing departments need to
ensure everything they say is robust, evidence-based, and
genuinely useful.

"University rankings are strange beasts — for example, they are
largely measures of research, yet they are used by students who
don't generally do much original research," Hillman told Business
Insider. "Between 30 and 40 UK universities currently claim to be
in the top 10, which proves such claims need to be taken with a
massive dose of salt while also showing just how many league
tables there now are."

He added: "This whole issue will explode again next week when the
first Teaching Excellence Framework
results are published, so it is a good thing that this specific
case has been resolved now."